Many people participate in sports for pleasure or to realize health benefits. In most sports motor skills and muscle movement combinations are frequently repeated. Furthermore, all sports require some degree of strength, endurance training, and/or skill for the practitioner to be successful. In addition to increasing strength, when muscle movement combinations are repeated over and over again a long-term muscle memory is created for performing those movement combinations. Eventually such muscle memory allows those muscle movement combinations to be performed without conscious effort. This decreases the need for specific attention to those muscle movement combinations and creates maximum efficiency and develops strength within the motor and memory systems.
In many sports, proper performance requires a proper stance. For example, in baseball having an accurate swing requires a proper stance. Many other motions such as catching and throwing a baseball or football or making a jump shot are often based on starting from a proper stance. In many sports one simply cannot perform at the highest level from a weak stance. As many individuals playing sports can testify properly learning and holding one's stance can be very difficult. Automatically achieving and using a proper stance is not easily done using conventional training equipment. Therefore, many players have long term problems with their stance.
It is therefore desirable to have a tool that helps improve an athlete's muscle memory that is related to achieving a proper stance. Various attempts have been made in the prior art to help solve sports training issues. Among these are U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,997,996; 4,023,810; and 4,037,847.
However, no known patent or other prior art when taken either singly or in combination is understood as being a complete solution to the foregoing problems associated with achieving and using a proper stance. Thus, a need exists for a reliable stance training device. Preferably such a stance training device would be easy to use, effective, easily moved from place to place, easily stored, and could be made available at relatively low cost.